Revelations
by ProcurerFaith
Summary: Repost. Hanatarou misses his friends dreadfully when they return to the living world. When he falls ill, he is reminded that a friend is a friend, no matter where they are. If you need them, they will come.


_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Bleach. All Bleach characters are owned by Tite Kubo or their respective creators. I am making no money from this fic. It is a just-for-fun project. The only bit I own is my own characters and the way the words are put together. _he odds looked insurmountable

_**Author's Note; 5**__**th**__** July 2008**__– So much for putting up all the fics in reverse chronological order :-P Remember, edits may not quite appear as you remember them, as I'm hashing together the beta and the original uploads. I do not plan to come back and amend this work (if I start picking holes in it, I'll never stop XD)_

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_**Revelations**_

It had never been easy for Hanatarou to fit in.

As a child, he had often stood in doorways, or at corners, watching as the other children would play and fight, and play-fight. He would watch them for ages, his painful shyness a barrier between them and himself. As though made of nothing but smoke and air, he could watch for hours and never be noticed, able to become almost invisible – as he inevitably always felt.

When dusk fell he would finally walk home, to a surrogate family who barely noticed when he arrived and left. He would take with him the new lessons he had learned that day about 'friendship' and hope one day to be able to try them out for himself.

He would watch always, every day - until the boys spotted him. They said he made the girls cry, that he was a dirty, filthy pervert watching the girls all the time, and that he deserved to be punished.

That day, he had gone home, wiping his own tears and holding a sleeve to his bloody nose. He had nursed himself, as it was easier than inconveniencing his 'family' with the task.

After that, he had stopped watching - stopped expecting anything from 'friendship'. That day had killed the fresh new bloom of confidence that had been growing within him, had withered the roots of his newly-found understanding.

When he was older, his 'parents' had encouraged him to go to the academy, convinced that he had strengths the shinigami could use. Hanatarou silently and stoically hid the suspicion that they were merely finding an excuse to get rid of him. Indeed, once he was at the academy, he never heard from them again.

Painfully shy, and able to fit in like a star in a square-shaped hole, Hanatarou hid himself against the walls, camouflaged himself – as he had always done. The one constant that always let him down was his clumsiness. More often than ever, he found himself tripping on things – first it was his hakama, then the bucket of water on the floor – then it was a foot. A foot that wasn't his.

And that was where it all began. It was where he began to fear friendship rather than try to covet it – where 'friendship' would come in many guises, but none of them true. Where it would come in the shape of those who would mock him, where it came in the guise of people who would only ask what they wanted and never give anything back, where it came prettily disguised in the gilded cage of 'take'.

It was never in Hanatarou to hate, though. Even though there were many – and he knew them all by name – who would mock him, even in his own division, even in his own squad, he could never learn to hate them. He would go to his quarters and cry, but he would never allow himself to hate. He knew that hate and anger would eat _his_ soul long before it ate theirs, that anger and hate was what made hollows and he never wanted to be like a hollow.

In fact, he had barely realised that the first real 'friends' he made were Ichigo and Ganju.

Rukia hadn't mocked him, not once. She had told him stories of the real world, somewhere he hadn't been since before he could remember. She had never asked more of him than he could give – and he'd have given everything for her. She had, against all possibility, seemed to enjoy his company. And he had enjoyed hers, more than he'd ever enjoyed anyone elses.

He had known, even when assigned to her cell as janitor, that she had been sentenced to death. He couldn't pretend that in the days before the arrival of Ichigo and Ganju, he hadn't cried for Rukia in his bed at night, silently releasing tears of pent-up frustration.

But then, Ichigo and Ganju _had _arrived. And with them they had brought another bout of new experiences for Hanatarou.

First, he had been kidnapped. He was somewhat flattered on some base level, that he'd been considered worthy of being held to ransom. Of course, his delusions were shattered immediately upon the 11th division's announcement that they didn't give a damn about what happened to him – as no-one ever had.

He had at first, been an inconvenience for Ichigo and Ganju. Somehow, he'd been caught up with them when they ran away from the group – even Hanatarou wasn't sure how that had happened.

However, he had been honest to himself and his training and his as yet untapped true skill when he had told Ganju that he would heal Ichigo in just one night. He had managed to do just that, exhausting himself in the process. It was natural for Hanatarou to give his all, but normally it was without recognition.

This time, things were different. This time, he wasn't mocked just for existing. This time, the people he was helping recognised and appreciated his help.

And then, Ganju had abbreviated his name. To Ganju, it had been nothing – shortening a confusing name to something he would not get tongue-tied with. But for Hanatarou, it was a sign of affection never afforded him before.

He tried to give his life for both he and Rukia, but was thwarted by Ganju's almighty conscience.

Since then, he had not been able to see Ganju, Ichigo – or even Rukia.

Now, without them, his life seemed even more empty.

Hanatarou was aware of the phrase 'It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all', but he bitterly rejected it. He had lost what most people take for granted, he had lost the thing he had chased since childhood, the thing called 'friendship' – that mutable, untouchable, formless set of emotions robbed from him by circumstance.

And as he sat, unmoving, on his knees, he held the broom closer and gazed at the one spot on the floor that wouldn't come clean. Slowly, it blurred before his gaze as warm tears slipped down his nose and onto the wooden floor, onto his shihakusho, into the broom.

"Why are you my only friend?" he whispered to the broom quietly. "Why can't I make friends? What's wrong with me?!" He touched his forehead with finger and thumb as he clung to the broom, sobbing. He could feel the heat of fever on his own brow, and knew that he should probably not be here, on the walkway, cleaning in the dark amidst the depths of winter.

He stood quickly, his face in his sleeve. The movement however was too quick for his body, weakened as it was by fever and he suddenly felt light-headed. The world suddenly felt so much bigger, his breath that much colder, his head that much lighter, his sight that much darker…

The last thing he noticed was the broom clattering to the floor.

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When he finally woke, after three days of unconsciousness, he was told that he had been out in the icy cold all night, that no-one had realised he was missing. This itself had not surprised Hanatarou.

His chest was weak, his birch-thin body ill-equipped to keep out the cold and the fever on his brow had turned nasty. It had been touch-and-go for a while, and despite all of Unohana's best efforts, for a while it had seemed as though he didn't not want to get better, as though his mind were sending his body the signal to bite on the cyanide capsule and give up.

What Unohana was convinced of however, was that Hanatarou had been brought back from the edge by familiar voices. Hanatarou's first surprise was that he did not remember hearing any voices. His second, and by far the biggest surprise, was who the voices belonged to.

First of all, Rukia had come. She had spent some time with him in the morning of each of the three days, having heard of his illness through the efficient Court of Pure Souls grapevine. She had encouraged him to keep breathing, when his chest was at it's weakest, when his body was on the brink of total collapse. She had told him what he was missing, the goings-on in the Court of Pure Souls, the information that Hanatarou always somehow had to hand. On that first morning, she had even shed a tear for him, empathising with the pain of being out in the freezing winter cold all night.

Then Ichigo had come, bringing Ganju with him. He had been called to the Court of Pure Souls on a mission, but on hearing that Hanatarou was ill, he had made special efforts to see him – despite three members of the fourth division attempting to hold him back. Finally, accepting that Ichigo would not be put off, Unohana had allowed him to visit with Hanatarou for a while, to at least see how he was faring, how he was being treated.

Ichigo had made it very clear that Hanatarou was to be given the best of care, without question.

Ichigo had spoken to Hanatarou of the new mission, of how he would have to watch his back more carefully now that Hanatarou was not there to heal him. He had spoken briefly of the past and future – and had encouraged Hanatarou to embrace his future and not let it die here, to not let it fade away like smoke on the wind.

Ganju's words had been less frequent, but he made his most poignant statement with his own self. From the moment of his arrival until Hanatarou's awakening, Ganju stayed beside his friend - sleeping, eating and drinking in the same chair. Until Hanatarou was out of danger he had stayed, talking gently at the boy in the bed. His words were of what his sister would do to him if she knew he were there, what she would do to him when he got back, but that mostly - and most importantly- he didn't care.

He had watched patiently as the boy's chest had risen and fallen, sometimes in rhythmic breathing, but mostly with the dangerous warning wheeze of fluid on the lungs. It was Ganju who had sat Hanatarou up in bed when the coughing fits came, it was Ganju who allowed him to rest against him when the hacking became too much. It was Ganju who has the hardest to lose when he finally had to go back to Kuukaku.

But, when he did finally leave, and the room was empty and chilled once more, Hanatarou himself was still warm.

He had realised something.

Friendship was something he carried with him, no matter where he went – and no matter where his friends went. If he truly needed them, they would find a way to be there. If they truly needed him, he would find a way to go to them. Their friendship had never died, it had only moved into a different shape. This thought warmed him like the the kotatsu in the room never could.

His true friends were something that would always be with him, even when he felt at his lowest – in his heart, in the warmest spot he could find, just where they were meant to be.

_-fini-_

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_Thank you for reading my fic! I hope you enjoyed it :)_


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